W.C. Fields

W.C. Fields (1880-1946) was an American comedian, actor, juggler, and writer, who became known as an entertainer in vaudeville shows and on Broadway at the turn of the century. In the 1920s, he starred in numerous silent film comedies. Fields' comic persona was a misanthropic and hard-drinking egotist, who remained sympathetic despite his supposed contempt for children and dogs. In the 1930s and 1940s, he became one of Hollywood's best-known film comedians. His trademarks were his swollen nose, raspy drawl, and grandiloquent vocabulary.


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 875. Photo: Paramount.

A place in the juggling hall of fame

W.C. Fields was born William Claude Dukenfield in the Philadelphia suburb of Darby, Pennsylvania, in 1880. He was the eldest of five children born to Cockney immigrant James Dukenfield and Philadelphia native Kate Felton.

He went to school for four years, then quit to work with his father selling vegetables from a horse cart. At eleven, after many fights with his alcoholic father (who hit him on the head with a shovel), he ran away from home. He lived in a hole in the ground for a while, depending on stolen food and clothing.

His first regular job was delivering ice. By age thirteen he was a skilled pool player and juggler and began working in vaudeville. At 21, he travelled across North America and Europe with a juggling act. He gradually incorporated comedy into his act. He imagined faking failures and caught the objects with his feet or on the rebound, with leg movements that might appear accidental to the spectator.

The difficulty and mastery of his tricks led to unanimous critical acclaim for his juggling skills, which later earned him a place in the Juggling Hall of Fame. The same was true of billiards, which he practised assiduously to the point of creating tricks, such as hitting the ball in such a way that it jumps backwards, high above the table, and then bounces off a part of his body before entering the pocket, with several variations.

Deliberately dressed in ragged clothes, extravagant top hats that made him famous, and a fake black moustache (although he was blond), his original tricks brought him international success. At age twenty-three he opened at the Palace in London and played with Sarah Bernhardt at Buckingham Palace. He starred at the Folies-Bergere with young Charles Chaplin and Maurice Chevalier on the programme. In 1906, he debuted on Broadway in the comedy 'The Ham Tree'.


Vintage Dutch card. Photo: Paramount. W.C. Fields and Chester Conklin in Fools for Luck (Charles Reisner, 1928).

Scoundrels or henpecked everyman characters

In 1915, when he was thirty-five, W.C. Fields moved to New York and made his film debut in the 15-minute short silent film Pool Sharks (Edwin Middleton, 1915), produced by Gaumont. He also participated in the script. On stage, he introduced a few novelties into his cabaret act including a crazy golf game. The act was seen by impresario Florenz Ziegfeld who contracted him. Fields was a featured comedian in the Ziegfeld Follies from 1915 through 1921. He became a star in the Broadway musical comedy 'Poppy' (1923), about carnival life, in which he played a colourful small-time con man, snake-oil peddler Eustace McGargle. It led to a role in 'George White's Scandals'.

His subsequent stage and film roles were often scoundrels or henpecked everyman characters. In 1925 D.W. Griffith made a film of 'Poppy, renamed Sally of the Sawdust (1925), starring Fields. He was a sensation in Hollywood and settled into a mansion near Burbank, California. He made several popular short films before focusing on features full-time.

He made twelve silent films before his first talkie in the short The Golf Specialist (Monte Brice, 1930). When sound came W.C. Fields was out as casting agents didn't like his voice. He only got a part when Paramount was casting Million Dollar Legs (Edward F. Cline, 1931) and wanted all the comedians they could get. His breakthrough as a film actor came with International House (A. Edward Sutherland, 1933)|.

In the same year, he played Humpty-Dumpty in the commercially unsuccessful Lewis Carroll adaptation Alice in Wonderland (Norman Z. McLeod, 1933), in which numerous other film stars also appeared. On the other hand, the comedy It's a Gift (Norman Z. McLeod, 1934) was a great success. Fields played a family man troubled by nagging wives, bratty Baby Leroy, noisy neighbours, and pesky strangers. He seeks his fortune with an orange plantation in California. It contained his famous "sleeping on the back porch" stage sketch.

In 1934, four more Fields films were released, including You're Telling Me! (Erle C. Kenton, 1934) in which his character - Sam Bisbee, an unsuccessful inventor - receives unexpected help from a princess (Adrienne Ames). The unusual role names Fields bore in his comedies are noteworthy: Professor Eustance McGargle, Elmer Prettywillie, Augustus Q. Winterbottom, J. Effingham Bellweather, Rollo La Rue, Egbert Sousè ("accent grave over the e"), Harold Bissonette ("pronounced Bissonay"), Ambrose Wolfinger, Larson E. Whipsnade, Cuthbert J. Twillie or T. Frothingill Bellows. The names were chosen by himself.


British postcard by De Reszke Cigarettes, no. 6. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). W.C. Fields and Freddie Bartholomew in David Copperfield (George Cukor, 1935).

A distaste for working with child actors

W.C. Fields' most famous role was the good-natured but notoriously profligate Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield (George Cukor, 1935). David was played by Freddie Bartholomew, who was only ten years old. Fields admired the Charles Dickens book and wanted desperately to play Mr. Micawber in the film, so he agreed to forego his usual ad-libs and put aside his distaste for working with child actors. After the film's release, Fields received excellent reviews; the New York Times even saw Fields as a "spiritual descendant" of Mr. Micawber. David Copperfield was the only film in which he acted as the script dictated and did not improvise spontaneously in front of the camera.

In 1936, W.C. Fields was forced to temporarily stop working due to an illness exacerbated by his alcoholism. He even gave up alcohol during this convalescence. His contract expired and was not renewed. He then turned to the radio and appeared in mostly spontaneous dialogues on Charlie McCarthy's radio shows featuring Edgar Bergen. To his surprise, his trading insults with ventriloquist dummy Charlie McCarthy made him famous again and in 1938, he returned to the big screen.

In 1939 he switched to Universal and made films written mainly by and for himself. He had two of his biggest film successes at Universal in 1940, one alongside Mae West in the frivolous comedy My Little Chickadee (Edward F. Cline, 1940), the other in the title role in The Bank Dick (Edward F. Cline, 1940), one of his best-known films today.

His doctor's pleas for moderation did not help, and Fields persisted in his excessive consumption of alcohol, particularly gin. His last starring role was in Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (Edward F. Cline, 1941). After long arguments with Universal, he secured almost complete artistic control over the film. The finished result enraged Universal Pictures and was a comedy full of surreal comedy and critical references to the Hollywood business. After that he largely retired from show business, taking only guest roles in a few feature films and occasional appearances on radio shows. In 1945, suffering from several illnesses (bouts of pneumonia, cirrhosis, etc.), he had to enter a sanatorium. He passed away in Pasadena in 1946. Ironically, W.C. Fields died on Christmas Day, the holiday he always said he detested.

W.C. Fields was married in 1901 to Harriet Hughes, his partner in juggling performances at the time, and they had one child, William Jr. (1904). Although Hughes and Fields remained married until he died in 1946, they separated in 1908. He had another son with his girlfriend Bessie Poole, named William Rexford Fields Morris (1917). His last mistress, Carlotta Monti, with whom he lived for 14 years, described some amusing and insightful anecdotes in the book 'W.C. Fields and Me'. W.C. Fields is interred at Forest Lawn, Glendale, CA, in the Great Mausoleum, Holly Terrace entrance, Hall of Inspiration. He was awarded two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Motion Pictures at 7004 Hollywood Blvd., and for Radio at 6316 Hollywood Blvd.


French postcard in the Entr'acte series by Éditions Asphodèle. Mâcon, no. 003/3. Photo: Collection: B. Courte; D.R. W.C. Fields at the set of My Little Chickadee (Edward F. Cline, 1940). Caption: W.C. Fields' humour is as much in his films as in everyday life! At the entrance to the studio where he is shooting his film, he has posted the following sign: "No admittance to this stage (with or without pass). This includes studio employee's!"


French postcard in the Entr'acte series by Éditions Asphodèle. Mâcon, no. 004/10. Photo: Collection: B. Courte; D.R. W.C. Fields, Fuzzy Knight, and Eddie Cline at the set of My Little Chickadee (Edward F. Cline, 1940). Caption: Close-up of W.C. Fields; on camera, director Eddie Cline.

Sources: Ed Stephan (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch, French, and English), and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 16 March 2024.